


i know how to speak

by the-bi-sokka-club (blametheone)



Series: Zukka Song Fics [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Engagement, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Modern AU, Old Married Couple, background kataang, background mailee - Freeform, married zukka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28126677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blametheone/pseuds/the-bi-sokka-club
Summary: “You, uh… you have a grey hair.”Sokka processed this in three stages: first, he blinked, then his face dropped, and then he clambered off the couch in a most un-graceful fashion and sprinted to the bathroom making sounds that vaguely resembled ‘no, no, no’.Or, Sokka and Zuko realise they're settling.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Zukka Song Fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1963387
Comments: 25
Kudos: 214





	i know how to speak

**Author's Note:**

> i wept like a wee baby while writing this.

for those music-while-reading people, this was written to:  
**i know how to speak** by **manchester orchestra**  
**northern wind** by **city and colour**  
**like real people do** by **hozier**  
**seal my fate** by **belly**  
**situation room** by **something for kate**

Sokka and Zuko started dating right after Sokka graduated.

Zuko was introduced to the group, by Aang, about a year before that when Aang invited him to come out to the city with them for donuts. And yeah, it wasn’t a soppy rom-com story like ‘love at first sight’, but it didn’t take long for Zuko to fall completely in love with Sokka.

And when he asked him, with a quiet voice and sweaty palms, there wasn’t even a beat of hesitation before Sokka said yes.

The first few months were hell for their friends.

Zuko was spontaneous and caring, and Sokka was protective and affectionate. They’d go to rivers together and go swimming; Sokka took Zuko to the planetarium and told him everything he knew. Their tastes in music differed but intersected at some very specific bands – and they would go to gigs together whenever Spoon or Bad Suns were in town.

Zuko moving in was unintended.

“Hey, I…” Zuko sighed, resting his face on the crook of Sokka’s shoulder. “Do you think your dads would be okay with me moving my study desk here?”

Sokka faltered, blinking.

“Uh…” he mindlessly rubbed Zuko’s back. “Probably. Why?”

Zuko pulled back with a groan and laid down on Sokka’s bed.

“I can’t get any work done. If Uncle isn’t busting in every two seconds with tea and new conversation, then Azula is screaming about something in the other room,” he rubbed his eyes. “Your house has twice the amount of people and somehow it’s still so quiet here.”

Sokka couldn’t help but chuckle quietly, but his sympathy was real. When he first went over to Zuko’s apartment he had also noticed the difference in energy.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t be a distraction?” Sokka laid down next to Zuko, poking at his ticklish spots and laughing when Zuko’s body flinched.

“You’re a good distraction,” Zuko winked. “And you’re at school all the time anyway.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Sokka sighed, glancing over at his pile of textbooks that were nagging at the back of his brain. “How about – you can move your desk here if I can also use it for study?”

“Deal,” Zuko grinned.

So, at ten months in, he moved his work desk into Sokka’s study room, then all of a sudden he was keeping clothes in Sokka’s wardrobe and was putting Sokka’s address down when he ordered anything online and it felt… normal.

And it was good. They were good. Because even when it went sour, it still came out good.

And sometimes it went really sour.

They were both good, well-intentioned, reasonable people who loved each other and supported each other, but that didn’t magically make all the bad stuff disappear. It didn’t mean Zuko magically unlearnt his temper, or his unhealthy coping mechanisms, or his PTSD. It didn’t mean that Sokka’s paranoia was washed away, nor did his defensiveness or absurd protectiveness.

“Why do you keep saying that?” Zuko asked, the sudden sound of his voice cutting into the soft quiet of the night air. The pillow rustled under his cheek as he nosed the back of Sokka’s neck.

“Saying what?”

More rustling. Sokka felt Zuko’s calloused hand skim over his waist, the pull getting tighter.

“‘You can leave me if you want to’,” Zuko answered. “It’s been nearly three years, Sokka. Every time you say you love me, you end the sentence with ‘you can leave if you want, I’ll be fine’.”

And there was this panicked, still moment where Sokka thought ‘fuck, _every_ time?’ and realised ‘yes, every time’. And a longer, panicked moment of trying to figure out how to explain his brain to his boyfriend.

“I just… it feels like you want me to leave but you’re not telling me to,” Zuko’s voice sounded out around the room again and the hurt in his words was painful. Sokka could physically feel the hurt in his chest, and he pulled at Zuko’s arms to push the two of them closer still. Zuko’s chin sat against the crook of Sokka’s neck, breathing even.

“Of course, I don’t want you to leave,” Sokka whispered gently. Zuko’s hands squeezed his.

“It would break me. Just thinking about it hurts. But the thing that hurts more is thinking of you feeling stuck with me, because you’re worried that leaving would upset me.”

“That’s-”

“I know it’s ridiculous,” Sokka cut him off. The rest of his words got stuck, but Zuko was patient.

Zuko was rarely patient, except when he was. He would get unreasonably angry and hot-tempered if the line was too long at the drive-thru, but Sokka once watched him wait for three hours outside of a hospital without a single care, just to pick up Katara from her placement shift on ward.

“But it’s not ridiculous,” the words eventually got unstuck from Sokka’s throat. “Because what if every time I say how much I love you, and how much you mean to me, you were thinking of breaking us up and I cut you off and made you feel bad and now you’re stuck with me, trying to get out?”

“That _is_ ridiculous,” Zuko replied, not even taking a beat to take in Sokka’s words. “That’s your anxiety-”

“I _know_ it’s my anxiety, Zuko, I _know_ it’s my crazy stupid brain but knowing that doesn’t stop my crazy stupid brain from thinking it _all_ _the_ _time_ ,” Sokka asserted, cutting him off.

Zuko tightened his grip around Sokka’s waist again, unsure of how to respond.

“I’m worried that you didn’t know what you signed up for,” Sokka blurted, voice a little wet. “I’m not fun to be around when the lights turn off. I’m not easy, Zuko. I want you to know that you can leave if you need to, and I don’t want you to hold yourself back for me.”

Zuko was quiet, and the silence was painful. He was shuffling behind Sokka, like the words were wiggling around under his skin, wanting to be spoken but unable to get into the right order first.

“Lights are off now,” he murmured, and it hit Sokka like a brick in the face.

Because the lights were off now. And, metaphorically speaking, maybe they had been off for a while. And Zuko hadn’t left. In fact, he was here, literally holding Sokka’s hand, having a hard conversation that Zuko three years ago would never have brought up. And Sokka was saying things and admitting to things that three years ago he wouldn’t have been comfortable to face within himself.

Maybe the lights had been off for a long time. And maybe the dark hadn’t scared Zuko.

Zuko’s voice rang out like a bell in the silence.

“I didn’t think I could love people the way I love you. And I didn’t think anyone would make me feel as loved as you do.”

A warmth bloomed throughout Sokka’s chest, a warmth that ran through all of his veins and filled his heart to its limits, a warmth so bright it burned him.

“I’m not leaving,” Zuko murmured. “I don’t want to. Don’t soft-cushion it. I don’t want you to protect me, I want to know how you feel.”

Sokka had thought about it – what he wanted for them. What he envisioned when he thought of a future. Sometimes the thought hurt to think about, unsure if it would ever come around. Sometimes it was a flighty daydream, a musing in the middle of a lunch break.

“I want us to move, get our own house,” Sokka breathed. “I want to wake up with you. I want to get mad that you put the milk back in the fridge with nothing in it. I want you to hate me for not doing the dishes.”

Zuko snorted, not having to use words to assert that they already woke up together, and got mad about milk and dishes.

“I want you to be here when I’m upset,” Sokka shuffled back, trying to be impossibly closer to Zuko, in an impossibly tighter grip. “And I’ve never wanted a single person in the world to be there for me when I’m upset.”

Zuko made a small noise on the back of Sokka’s neck, something like a hum that sounded like a smile.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else,” Zuko grinned. “You’ve ruined me.”

When Sokka woke the next morning, the bed was empty.

“Shit,” Zuko mumbled when Sokka appeared in the doorway. “I tried to get up early so there was no way you would wake up before I got back.”

Sokka smirked and leant against the doorframe.

Zuko was leaning over the kitchen bench, laptop open while the kettle next to him softly simmered – nearing boil.

“I’m fine,” Sokka assured. And it was strange, but he meant it. “I knew you’d be around here somewhere.”

And he did.

For all the years of waking up in panicked delusions about his loved one’s dying while he slept, all the running around the house listening for sounds of breathing and searching for signs that someone was hurt, he wasn’t panicked this time. He was sure that Zuko had been truthful last night, that he hadn’t scared him off. At least not yet.

Zuko smiled a tiny smile, and when Sokka wandered nearby he wasted no time wrapping them close together. Zuko turned the laptop and Sokka noticed the fifteen tabs open – most of them real estate and some of them random google searches about the areas they lived and worked in.

“You were serious, right?”

And it was decided. Three years into their relationship they moved into their own place, and not too long after the housewarming, Katara and Aang decide moved in with them to divide the rent up.

Six months after they moved in, Sokka graduated with his degree in engineering, and two months after that the bank finally approved Suki and Zuko’s application for lease on the block in main street so they could finally begin the construction on the dojo.

(Sokka made frequent jokes that Zuko wasn’t allowed to fall in love with any of his students and Zuko always tried to joke back ‘no promises’ before inevitably stumbling over his words trying to convince Sokka he was kidding.)

Toph was the first one to gag and tell them they were the ‘old married couple’ of the group. Sokka, taking offense, pointed out that Katara and Aang had been together longer than they had, to which the entire group seemed to be in agreeance that Katara and Aang were still the ‘young and in love’ type of couple, while Sokka and Zuko had settled into ‘old grandpas’ (Toph’s exact words).

At the time, Sokka had pouted and disagreed, while Zuko nodded and agreed behind his back, much to everyone’s amusement.

About two days after Sokka and Zuko ‘celebrated’ (both forgot until they checked the date at 6pm and watched a movie together to celebrate) their fifth anniversary, Katara and Aang announced their engagement.

The wedding was a small affair. About six months after their engagement they had found their own place to move into, which allowed for them to incorporate some of Aang’s cultural customs into the wedding, but for the most part it was a very basic ceremony. Aang asked Zuko to carry the arrow to his and Sokka’s house, where Katara was getting ready, and they both pretended that Zuko wasn’t tearing up. They kept the tradition of barley and tea leaves, and Sokka pretended he wasn’t crying when he noticed Gran-Gran pass Katara a kudlik shortly after the ceremony.

The rest of the night was a feast, surrounded by friends and family, and Sokka could feel everyone glancing at him and Zuko the whole night, but he kept his mouth shut. Toph made an impromptu speech later into the night and Suki had to cover her mouth with her hand to stop her from making some rather unsavoury jokes, but everyone enjoyed the kerfuffle anyway.

It made Sokka warm, to be surrounded by their loved ones like this. And it made him think some things. But they weren’t ready for those things yet.

Given that they were still only twenty-three and twenty-four, Zuko and Sokka got away with only spared glances and quiet remarks at the wedding – and probably also something to do with the fact that they were gay but neither of them felt like ruminating on that too much.

But Mai and Ty Lee – Zuko’s age-old family friends he grew up with – announced out of the blue that they were engaged, about two years after Aang and Katara had wed, and that was when the questions really started flooding in.

“Seven years! That’s flown! Aren’t you going to tie the knot soon??”

“You’d both be ready to start a family now, wouldn’t you?”

“Well with your careers going so well, it’s only a natural step, right?”

Zuko’s usual move was to purse his lips, hum, nod and either change the conversation or flee as quickly as possible. Sokka’s go-to was to charm the person into forgetting what they had asked in the first place. At the end of the night – after each and every family affair, now – they would go home and giggle about which family member had been the most invasive that night.

And of course they had talked about it, fleetingly, over the years. But they had both felt so young, or that it was so unnecessary, or (for a short while) illegal. And still, up until this point, they found themselves unable to justify the money and time that would have to be spent on a wedding – and they didn’t care enough about the idea of marriage to just elope.

Zuko, at one point, had turned his phone nonchalant to show Sokka the price of the fancy new fridge they had wanted and made a comment, “you know that’s how much Katara’s dress cost?” and Sokka nearly fell off the couch.

And, just as Zuko was toying around with the idea of making a savings account for a possible wedding, Druk went and ripped up the curtains. The cost wasn’t _too_ much, per se, but it was certainly enough for Zuko to very quickly make that bank account a ‘rainy day emergencies’ one.

One fateful morning, two years after Mai and Ty Lee’s engagement (very fast approaching their wedding day, now), Zuko was startled by the sudden sound of Sokka dropping a teaspoon full of sugar in the middle of making his morning coffee.

Zuko made a startled noise and turned his head towards the small commotion, hoping for an explanation like ‘spider’ or ‘clumsy’ and instead watched Sokka stare distantly at the far wall, eyes unfocused, counting frantically on his fingers.

“What is it?” he asked. Druk was sitting up now, ears pricked with attention, and Zuko felt similarly curious.

“Zuko, we’re-” Sokka pouted, eyes finally turning to Zuko. “We’re settling, oh my god.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re settling,” Sokka had a look of horror in his eyes. “I got excited when I got up this morning and you had taken the trash out. We’ve started doing game night with our friends! We’re an old married couple!! Holy shi-”

He gasped, and Zuko couldn’t help but smirk as Sokka exclaimed with disdain, “Zuko we _scheduled sex_ last week because of work!”

Zuko snorted and shook his head.

“We’re not old and we’re not married, Sokka,” he assured, and Sokka rolled his eyes and waved him off, but the faux-panic seemed to have passed.

“We’re so settled,” he heard Sokka mumble to himself as he resumed making his coffee, and Zuko pulled Druk into his lap in an attempt to start a conversation with someone a little more rational than Sokka.

That night, while watching a movie, Zuko was playing with Sokka’s hair distantly – and it happened.

“Oh,” Zuko made a soft noise, and when Sokka turned his head to catch his eye he realised his mistake. “Ah- nothing.”

Sokka frowned.

“What?” he insisted, and Zuko knew that letting it go was a lost cause, and that he was too bad of a liar to make something up on the spot.

“You, uh… you have a grey hair.”

Sokka processed this in three stages: first, he blinked, then his face dropped, and then he clambered off the couch in a most un-graceful fashion and sprinted to the bathroom making sounds that vaguely resembled ‘no, no, no’.

Zuko, the most unhelpful and unsupportive boyfriend, had his face in his hands as a desperate attempt to pretend he wasn’t giggling, but when Sokka shouted, “I’m _twenty-seven_!” from the bathroom in a tone that sounded like something from a B-grade drama movie he couldn’t pretend any longer.

“Babe, you were right. We are an old married couple,” Zuko called out. Sokka appeared very suddenly in the doorway, finger pointing.

“You,” he asserted, “Are not allowed to have a say in this. We’ll be in our sixties when you get your first fucking wrinkle, I swear.”

“I’m just lucky.”

“You’re a baby-faced asshole is what you are,” Sokka mumbled from somewhere inside the bathroom.

He re-appeared, pouting, holding a single grey hair between his fingers, and Zuko held his arms open.

“Sokka,” he cooed, letting himself be clambered over in Sokka’s attempt to crawl into his lap. “You know half of our friends are going grey or white, right?”

“Yeah, but they’re not _me_ ,” Sokka whined, and his façade was broken by a tiny smile at the end.

And when Sokka looked up, Zuko had this adorable glint in his eye, and Sokka got a wicked idea.

~*~

“Hey, beautiful,” Sokka greeted Suki with an unexpected hug – a bad idea, _always_ a bad idea to approach a woman who literally trains martial arts from behind, a lesson he had learnt more than once, hence his vocal announcing of his identity. “Didn’t think you were here today.”

It was a joke of course, bad or not. Suki had dedicated so much of her life to her work that it was easier to show up at the dojo than try to organise something with her.

But Sokka wasn’t here to see her.

“Looking for your husband?” she asked, giving him a quick peck on the cheek as she moved around the front desk to rifle through to some paperwork. “Good timing, if you are, he just finished for the day.”

“Thursday,” Sokka nodded. “He’s a predictable man. Somewhere out the back, yeah?”

“Might still be in the lockers? But if not, yeah.”

Sokka nodded, pat her hand, and moved off towards the back of the building, managing to catch Zuko with his hand on the door.

Zuko startled at the sight of him, surprised, before a huge grin broke out on his face.

“Hey, you,” Sokka grinned, taking Zuko’s arm and pulling him out the back door.

“Hey, you,” Zuko responded, readjusting his satchel. “What are you doing here?”

The light from the sun was blinding for a brief second, but the air was cool and the weather was warm and Sokka had a really good feeling.

“We’re not an old married couple yet!” Sokka insisted, pulling Zuko through the parking lot and down the gravel path that he knew led to a park not at all far away. “Spontaneous lunch date with my boyfriend!”

He ignored Zuko’s relatively valid – if mumbled – point that being settled and being spontaneous were not mutually exclusive concepts. After a few stomps and a single twist in the path, the gravel stopped and their view opened up over the grassy pasture.

Sokka pulled at Zuko’s arm, excited, and found a small patch of grass he deemed appropriate enough for lunch. A blanket, a satchel, two assess and a small container of food later – they were having a picnic.

“You know this is where we had our first date?” Sokka mumbled, playing with his fingers.

Zuko nodded, looking around the park. “It’s one of the reasons we picked this spot for the dojo. Felt like fate.”

And Sokka knew that already, but it felt like a light turned on inside him just to hear it again.

“I love you,” he murmured, resting his head against Zuko’s shoulder.

Sokka gently picked up Zuko’s hand with both of his, playing with his fingers.

“I don’t mind settling,” Sokka said quietly. “Not if its you. I don’t want to settle with anyone else.”

And gently, before Zuko could even realise he had something in his hands, Sokka pushed a tiny black box against Zuko’s fingers.

Zuko was quiet. Sokka could feel his heart beating in his toes and his throat.

“No…” Zuko whispered softly to himself, “Wait, no- this can’t-”

Sokka was too busy dying on the inside to notice Zuko diving for his bag, but not quite busy enough with the feeling like he was going to vomit a fountain of shame to miss the fact that Zuko didn’t run off with the bag.

He was rummaging through it.

Zuko, who was moving with more anxious impatience than Sokka had ever seen, grew immediately frustrated and up-ended his bag, emptying the entire contents onto the blanket.

Sokka was still, rigid, watching in horror and curiosity as Zuko frantically searched through his things, and when he finally finds what he must have been looking for he fell into Sokka’s lap with all the grace of a baby’s first steps, pushing a near-identical box into Sokka’s grip.

“You weren’t meant to propose,” Zuko panted, looking up at Sokka like he was a cure for his fever. “I had this whole thing planned. I had concert tickets, for next month. I was going to do a whole speech before, or maybe after- I don’t know, I hadn’t decided-”

“Zuko-”

“I was going to tell you that I will keep plucking your stupid grey hairs until we have to dye them, and you can make fun of me for still getting carded when we’re forty-”

Sokka’s heart was racing still, but for all the good reasons now – face split into the widest grin he thought was possible and a soft, silent laugh bubbling out of his chest.

“And I wanted to do it before Mai’s wedding in June, because I cannot handle her mother asking us if we’re ‘serious’ again, and…” Zuko stopped, for a breath. “And I knew you would say yes.”

Sokka snorted, holding up the ring box he had given Zuko with a roll of his eyes.

“I guess you got that one right,” he joked.

Zuko made a small noise that might have sounded frustrated with Sokka’s joke if he wasn’t grinning ear to ear and beaming with pride and love. He dove in, wrapping his arms around Sokka’s shoulders and pulling him down on top of him.

Sokka’s pretty sure there was a young mother with a pram on the other side of the park watching their exchange, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Especially not when Zuko kissed the side of his next and murmured, “I like being settled. I’m so happy, with you. I like being settled with you.”

“Sounds like a yes to me,” Sokka joked, dropping his face into the crook of Zuko’s neck.

He could feel Zuko’s chest rumble with a low laugh, and he let himself fall in love with this moment, and fall in love with Zuko just that little bit more.

**Author's Note:**

> not only was this not beta-read but i didn't even edit it myself i hope it wasnt a trainwreck lol
> 
> the ring zuko bought for sokka: https://kavalri.com.au/collections/black-zirconium-rings/products/custom-sanded-black-zirconium-and-dual-yellow-gold-inlay-ring
> 
> the ring sokka bought for zuko: https://kavalri.com.au/collections/mens-gold-wedding-rings/products/yellow-gold-and-titanium-inlay-mens-wedding-ring


End file.
